First, Happy New Year to all my readers and Facebook fans. Here’s hoping 2011 will be as good as or better than its predecessors.

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Second, the U. S, Postal Service has announced it will be releasing Civil War themed stamps in each year of the sesquicentennial (see here). The first two stamps will commemorate 1861 events, the bombing of Ft. Sumter and the Battle of First Bull Run. I could only find this small image of the Bull Run stamp, but it is a copy of the painting that hangs on the wall of the Manassas Visitor Center, The Capture of Ricketts’ Battery, painted for the NPS in 1964 by Sydney E. King. Here’s a nice big image of the painting (click for a larger version):

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Third and last, this is the 1,000th post on Bull Runnings – thanks for stopping by!

A few weeks back the folks at PBS’s American Experience sent me a copy of their new program on Robert E. Lee set to air next Monday night, January 3, at 9:00 PM ET. I finally got a chance to view it last night and was pleased with what I saw: a well-balanced and generally unvarnished look at the marble man, warts and all. Of course, such a view may displease many who subscribe to the belief that Lee was in the end a “pure Christian with a clean soul.” Here’s a promo:

The 83 minute program features an impressive list of “talking heads” – some usual suspects but encouragingly some newer faces as well. Here they are in what I think is their order of appearance:

Lesley Gordon

Michael Fellman

Peter Carmichael

Elizabeth Brown Pryor

Gary Gallagher

Emory Thomas

Ervin Jordan

Joseph Glatthaar

Winston Groom

The program does a nice job of laying out Lee’s life in chronological order and identifying the influences that helped form his character: the role his father played in the early days of the Republic and his subsequent disgrace; Lee’s single-minded purpose firmed up at West Point, where he developed his sense of duty, self-discipline, denial, and achievement, and also his burning ambition. Both his courtship of Mary Custis and his experience in Mexico under Winfield Scott were lessons in the value of audacity. Lee never really felt at home at Arlington and preferred the order of military life, but in 1857 after the death of his father-in-law he returned to Arlington, where he was not a good manager of the farm and was less than kind to “insubordinate” slaves – this segment may cause some discomfort to some viewers. Lee is described as aligned with “slavery apologists” who felt slavery was far from ideal and would eventually die off but who also believed that negroes were better off as slaves and that the institution should be defended to the last. Also interestingly the commentators note that Lee did not become particularly religious until after the Mexican War, when he was having trouble adapting to the peacetime army and Mary became ill.

A better job of exploring Lee’s decision to resign from the army could have been done. Although a good amount of time was spent showing how hard the decision was, the producers could have more closely examined why, and really if, Lee and his fellows actually felt that their state was their country. Why not their section of the state? Why not their county? Why not their town? How do we explain the decision of many to side with the Confederacy despite the decisions of their states to not do so? Were these decisions based more on philosophy or, more likely, finances than on loyalty? I tried to discuss this here a while back, with disappointing results.

A little more precision could have been used in describing just what Francis Blair offered Lee – command of an army, not the army.

Lee’s role early in the war, his failures, disappointments, and physical aging are adequately discussed. Then comes his rise, reorganization of the army, and strategic vision. In the winter of 1862-63 he was plagued by bad temper, paperwork, the deaths of a daughter and two grandchildren, and possibly a heart attack. He reached his zenith at Chancellorsville, the moment “that the bond between Lee and his men was sealed.” In the wake of the wreck of his army at Gettysburg, Lee became more insistent that his men – the Confederate people, in fact – become more committed to the cause, that they could persevere because God was on their side, but that they must be brave, strong, and disciplined. He demanded that they live up to the standards to which he held himself. While desertions spiked in 1864, so too did executions [in this Lee was not unlike his father, who was admonished by Washington for his harsh treatment of deserters].

Through the Overland Campaign, Lee broke down further, until finally at North Anna he couldn’t rise from his cot to take advantage of a tactical opportunity. When his army was backed into a siege, he probably knew the gig was up but persisted as he believed it his duty as a soldier.

Post war, Lee was never able to reconcile to the defeat. He believed that his cause was just, that God was on his side, and that his men had been brave. Defeat made no sense to the engineer given the knowns of the equation – until the day he died he believed the wrong side had won the war. He never accepted reconstruction (though he publicly encouraged his countrymen to do so) and was bewildered by emancipation. In the end, he believed his life a failure, and that the great mistake of it was taking a military education in the first place.

[Perhaps the most tantalizing quote ever attributed to Lee comes at the end of Freeman’s opus, when near the end of his life he advised a southern mother to teach her infant son that he “must deny himself.” If God was on the side of the south, if the cause was just, if the soldiers were brave, then were they and their people not disciplined enough to achieve victory? What did folks like Jefferson and de Tocqueville think along these lines even before the war? Was this what Lee meant by his advice?]

Don’t get me wrong – the program is no hit piece, and the above paragraph presents thoughts that ran through my head as I watched. Your mileage may vary. Give it a whirl Monday at 9:00 PM ET.

Last night I completed my answers to questions that will appear in interview format in the upcoming issue of a quarterly Civil War magazine. I’ve conducted seventeen of these things for Bull Runnings, but this is the first time I’ve been on the receiving end. It’s tough work, writing about yourself. Tough enough that I put it off as long as I could. But I think it came out fairly well, though you can never tell with anything that appears in print media – every editor is different. For a humorous account involving Mark Twain and an editor with a heavy hand, see volume one of his autobiography, pages 164-180. (Editors work under strict time and space limitations, and so sometimes the submitted manuscript gets what authors typically refer to as “hacked up” or “butchered”. But good editors make good writers. I try not to get too upset with changes, and only protest when the changes result in factual errors. I encourage anyone in this situation to firmly – but tactfully – express your feelings. The editor or publisher doesn’t want egg on his/her face any more than do you.)

Thanks to the magazine in question for their interest in the blog and me. 2011 is shaping up to be a busy year for me as a result of the sesquicentennial and the role of First Bull Run in the first year of it. I suppose in 2012 I’ll retreat to obscurity, but it’ll be fun while it lasts.

Stuart Salling over at Louisiana in the Civil War has this interesting article on what compelled P. G. T. Beauregard to adopt the Rebel battle flag. Check it out. I’ll try to find the original Richmond Daily Dispatch article and put it in the resources section.

Dulce bellum inexpertis

“I am sending you these little incidents as I hear them well authenticated. They form, to the friends of the parties, part of the history of the glorious 21st. More anon.”

About

Hello! I’m Harry Smeltzer and welcome to Bull Runnings, where you'll find my digital history project on the First Battle of Bull Run which is organized under the Bull Run Resources section. I'll also post my thoughts on the processes behind the project and commentary on the campaign, but pretty much all things Civil War are fair game. You'll only find musings on my “real job” or my personal life when they relate to this project. My mother always told me "never discuss politics or religion in mixed company”, and that's sound advice where current events are concerned.

The Project

This site is more than a blog. Bull Runnings also hosts digitized material pertaining to First Bull Run. In the Bull Run Resources link in the masthead and also listed below are links to Orders of Battle, After Action Reports, Official Correspondence, Biographical Sketches, Diaries, Letters, Memoirs, Newspaper Accounts and much, much more. Take some time to surf through the material. This is a work in process with no end in sight, so check back often!